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Safety, Legal and Regulatory

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Legal, Safety, and Regulatory Requirements

Celletta Tate

HCS/341
Human Resources in Health Care

2/11/13

Gina Drake

The safety, legal, and regulatory is the most important law an organization because the department involves employing, developing, utilizing, managing and understanding the staff in an organization. Legal concerns can play an important role in staffing, particularly in selection (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, and Cardy, 2010). Many legal restraints, particularly federal legislation such as Department of Labor, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission affects the human resource process. Laws and regulatory requirements are currently in place to standardize and promote workplace safety. Organizations that have a wide range safety programs have resulted in a decrease of accidents, reduced workers’ compensation claims and lawsuits and less accident-related expenditures (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, and Cardy, 2010). Many experts and managers in the human resource department have executed strategies to act in accordance with federal regulations to efficiently supervise employee health and safety in the workplace. An organization has the responsibility as authorized by all levels of government to offer all employees the assurance of a working environment free from health hazards. According to Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, and Cardy (2010), the two most basic workplace regulations that affect employees are workers’ compensation laws at the state level and the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA) at the federal level. Of these two sets of laws, the policies, operations, and objectives are very different from each other. Every state has their own compensation law for workers and the terms for funding and enforcing the law differs in each state. Because of safety laws and regulations, employers are responsible for making sure that the

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